THREE MILES FROM BOULOGNE.
He was nobly born at Sylviaco in the territory of Boulogne in Picardy. Renouncing the world in his youth, he entered himself a brother in the abbey of Hautmont in Haynault, where it was his employment to keep the cattle, and to hew wood for the community. He was distinguished for his eminent spirit of prayer, and being compelled by obedience to receive holy orders, was promoted to the priesthood. He after this obtained leave to live alone in a hermitage near mount Cassel, and afterward in 688 founded in a wood upon his father’s estate in Sylviaco in the Boulognois, the abbey of Samer, corruptly so called for St. Ulmar’s, at present of the Congregation of St. Maur. St. Ulmar founded a nunnery at Vileria, now Wiere aux bois, a mile from his own monastery, in which he placed his niece Bertana abbess. Ceadwalla, king of the West-Saxons, passing that way in his journey to Rome to receive baptism, conferred on St. Ulmar a notable largess toward carrying on his foundation. In close retirement in his hermitage near mount Cassel, the saint preserved himself always free from worldly passions by flying from the occasions which chiefly excite them, and by withdrawing from the great scene of earthly business, envy, avarice, and strife. Here shutting out the busy swarm of vain images which besets us in the world, he inured his mind to happy recollection and heavenly contemplation. In this sweet repose he daily advanced in fervor and divine charity till he was called to the joys of his Lord on the 20th of July, 710. He was glorified by miracles, and is named in the Roman and other Martyrologies on the 20th of July. On the 17th of June his relics were conveyed to Boulogne for fear of the plunder of the Normans; and from thence to the abbey of St. Peter’s at Ghent, where they were burnt by the fury of the Calvinists in the sixteenth century. See his life written soon after his death in Mabillon, Act. Bened. t. 3, p. 237; and more full, with new remarks, by Cuper the Bollandist, Jul. t. 5, p. 81.
ST. JEROM ÆMILIANI, C.
FOUNDER OF THE CONGREGATION OF REGULAR CLERGY OF SOMASCHA.
He was born at Venice of a patrician family; and, in the most troublesome times of the republic, served in the troops from his childhood. Whilst he was governor of the new castle in the mountains of Tarviso, he was taken prisoner, cast into a dungeon, and loaded with chains. His sufferings he sanctified by penance and prayer; and being delivered by the miraculous protection of the mother of God, arriving at Tarviso, he hung up his chains before an altar consecrated to God under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin, and, returning to Venice, devoted himself to the exercises of prayer and all virtues. At that time a famine and a contagious distemper having reduced many families to the greatest distress, he laid himself out in relieving all, but was particularly moved with compassion for abandoned orphans. These he gathered in a house which he hired, clothed and fed them at his own expense, and instructed them himself with unwearied zeal in the Christian doctrine and in all virtue. By the advice of St. Cajetan and others, he passed to the continent and erected like hospitals for orphans at Brescia, Bergamo, and other places; and others for the reception of penitent women. At Somascha, on the frontiers of the Venetian dominions, between Bergamo and Milan, he founded a house which he destined for the exercises of those whom he received into his Congregation, and in which he long resided. From this house it took its name; though it was sometimes called St. Mayeul’s, titular of a college at Pavia, which St. Charles Borromeo put under his direction.
The instruction of youth and young clergymen became also an object of his zeal in his foundations, and continues still to be in his institute. The brothers, during the life of the founder, were all laymen, and it was only approved as a pious Congregation. The holy founder died at Somascha on the 8th of February, 1537, of a contagious distemper which he had caught by attending the sick. He was beatified by Benedict XIV.; and canonized by Clement XIII. An office in his honor was appointed for the 20th of July, by a decree of the holy see published in 1769. Three years after his death, in 1540, his Congregation was declared a religious Order by Paul III., and confirmed under the rule of St. Augustine by St. Pius V. in 1571, and again by Sixtus V. in 1586. It has no houses out of Italy and the Catholic Swiss Cantons. It is divided into three provinces, of Lombardy, Venice, and Rome. The general is chosen every three years out of each province in its turn. See his life written in Latin by Aug. Turtura, Milan, 1620, 8vo., and Helyot, Histoire des Ord. Rel. t. 4, c. 33.